Even if President Obama, Congress, and the captains of industry get everything right, long-term economic growth is over. There was a glaring omission from President Obama’s speech tonight, peak oil.

President Obama told us effectively, “Yes, the economy hit an iceberg, but we can patch the leak and cruise on.” He did not level with the American people about what is going to happen after the Obama stimulus bump two to four years from now. The current recession could not have come at a better time. The economic slowdown will mask the initial symptoms of peak oil.

I truly respect Mr. Obama’s ability. From a hope standpoint, watching him tonight was inspirational. "The time to take charge of our future is here," Obama declared. There is a night and day difference between how many brain cells President Obama can muster and that of his predecessor. He is right that you have to address several issues to solve the problem; he focused on the financial crisis, renewable energy, health care reform, and education. The question is which issues should we focus on? For instance, should we be focusing on railroads instead of highways, and maybe population reduction in addition to healthcare reform.

Even if we can get banks to start lending, rebuild our infrastructure, resurrect the consumer economy, it is all for not, because production from the overall resource pool that our entire lifestyle is based on is peaking now—peak everything. The stimulus package is like repainting the Titanic while she is going down. Let’s instead beach her, get off the wreck of the RMS modern culture, and move on to something better.

Tell the band to pack-up and let’s be honest; after the Obama bump later this year the economy will start its slide. The decline will be discontinuous. We will rest for a while at the rocky top plateau and then abruptly drop to a lower level.

Economic decline will take down a couple large propped up zombie banks. Then rising fuel costs will take down one or more of the major automakers followed by most of the airline industry. Then fuel shortages will interrupt long haul trucking which will take out many retailers and malls. Then energy intensive food production and selection starts to diminish. Spare parts for complex equipment start to be in short supply. Complexity will slowly unwind as the economy powers down to a new steady state.

Saudi Arabia's historical crude oil production indicates a peak of 9.6 million barrels/day in 2005. In 2008, crude production was 9.3 mbd. In 2009 it is forecast to be 8.1 mbd followed by an increase in 2010 to 8.5 mbd. Unfortunately, after 2010 a steady decline is forecast.

Regardless of future oil demand, oil production is going to start its inexorable decline. Alternative energy sources, such as renewables, will not fill the gap. Even with major technological breakthroughs, renewables could account for only 30 percent of energy supply by the middle of the century. For example, a fifth of America’s corn crop is already being used to produce four billion gallons of ethanol. You also cannot make a solar collector with a solar collector; you need fossil fuels.

When it comes to climate change, the simple fact that no matter what, our modern culture will find and burn every square inch of carbon it can get it hands on to maintain our “non negotiable” lifestyle. We may enact programs to slow carbon emissions, but all of the carbon will still be burned anyway. Even if CO2 emission are cut to zero, global warming will coast on a hundred years or more like a supertanker.

So things are going to slowdown and warm up. Regarding warming up, it was nearly 50 degrees today where I live in Telluride, CO. We are having April weather in February. It looks like our ski season may be getting shorter.

Shorter winters and longer hotter summers is a big problem for farmers. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing them to completely stop surface water deliveries for at least a three-week period beginning March 1. Authorities said they haven't had to take such a drastic move for more than 15 years.

My concern is that despite our economy being powered down by peak oil, our “the world belongs to man” culture will not change. We will not learn our lesson and continue a lite version of shopping cart roller derby.

That’s the challenge President Obama neglected to mention in his speech to Congress tonight. That a bailout bonanza and throwing a couple Wall Street executives in jail won’t keep the ship from sinking. The challenge is even bigger than just peak oil or the engine room is filling with water. The true challenge is replacing our culture or the ship itself.

The RMS modern culture cannot be saved. Even if we dodge this financial crisis bullet and implement an oil depletion protocol for a soft peak oil landing, we will still continue to create crises in the future. We will still be exploiting most of the world population for a small group of wealthy to live high on the hog. We will continue species extinction like a blue light special.

Modern culture also suffers from generational environmental amnesia. We don’t remember what the world was like for our forefathers, so we do not appreciate what we are doing to our life supporting ecosystem and the other species because we just don’t live long enough.

The only way out of the endless cycle of dominion of planet, people, and species that has been going on since the agricultural revolution is to start something better. We are not walking away from something; we are walking towards a new and better story that, “humanity belongs to the earth.”

We have to become the change we want to see. We are the ones we have been waiting for. President Obama should have said, “everybody into the lifeboats, we are going to someplace better.”

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Visit www.culturequake.org to read the most updated version of this essay and to read the blog as a whole work, visit the Culturequake amazon.com book store, and learn more about the book Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture. Visit www.restorationfarm.org to learn what we are doing to grow new stories and cultures. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC.

Notes:

The Oil Drum
Non OPEC-12 Oil Production Peaked in 2004

The Oil Drum
Analysis of Decline Rates

The Oil Drum
Saudi Arabia's Crude Oil Production Peaked in 2005

Financial Times
World will struggle to meet oil demand

The Times
Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say

Truthout
Drought to Cut Off Federal Water to California Farms

Peter H., Jr. Kahn
The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture